Not a lantern, not a carriage, not a single sound of the city over the unconcerned stony surface; if you had closed your eyes you would really have thought that you were in a village.

There a dog was barking.

I had never before heard a dog barking in the city, and I laughed for happiness.
"Listen, a dog is barking." My wife embraced me, and said: "It is there, on the corner." We bent over the window-sill, and there, in the transparent, dark depth, we saw some movement--not people, but movement.

Something was moving about like a shadow.

Suddenly the blows of a hatchet or a hammer resounded.